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We were ahead of the curve on mass blogging about barf, we had Don’t Eat Poop T-shirts in four languages (Bill Murray got the Chinese one), but never had the resources to pull off a movie.

Carly Mallenbaum of USA Today asks, should humans be uncomfortable talking about something that everyone does, regardless of age, race, religion, income or gender?.

At least that’s what director Aaron Feldman hopes you do while watching his documentary, Poop Talk (in select theaters Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and other cities, and on demand), which opens a dialogue about doo-doo with the help of dozens of scientists and comedians.

Guests include Dr. Drew Pinsky (who explains that being grossed out by feces has evolutionary purposes), a skittish Eric Stonestreet (the Modern Family actor says he can’t poop in a public restroom), a candid Nicole Byer (she talks about using a plane toilet while eating a burger), a wise Rob Corddry (he owns a tricked-out bidet) and the affable Kumail Nanjiani.

Yes, that’s the same Nanjiani who recently earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay for his personal love story, The Big Sick.

The critically acclaimed comedy contains it’s own poop scene, as Kumail tries to figure out why his girlfriend, Emily (played by Zoe Kazan), wants to go to a diner at 3 a.m. for, she says, “a cup of coffee.”

“Why are you being so weird?” Kumail asks a shifty Emily, who finally reveals her hidden motive: “I have to take a huge (freaking) dookie!”

In Poop Talk, Nanjiani says there are plenty more scatological stories where that one came from.

There’s the joke his dad used to tell about how swallowing gum would make your poop become “a yo-yo.” Nanjiani hated that line, especially because as a child he avoided pooping at all costs.

“I figured (that poop is) all the stuff your body doesn’t need. So if I could figure out the formula and just eat what my body needs, it would all get absorbed into me and then I would never have to poop, right?” he says.

The comedian also recalls a time when he was eight years old. He was talking to another kid at a party, “and I noticed he had (pooped) himself,” Nanjiani says. “He looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘That’s not poo; it’s party cream.’ “

Probably not the image you wanted, but it affects my ability to go for a morning run, and dates back to working construction 40 years ago (corn silks can be versatile).

Essex Police in the UK are on #poowatch and tweeting about it. This after a suspected drug dealer believed to have drugs hidden in his body has now for 21 days refused to poop. The BBC reports the 24-year-old was arrested Jan. 17 and has been under supervision since then, with the department’s Operation Raptor team that arrested him providing updates like this one, tweeted Wednesday: “Day 21/3 weeks for our man on #poowatch still no movements/items to report, he will remain with us until Friday when we are back at court where we will be requesting a further 8 days should he not produce anything before that hearing.”

Last Friday they tweeted that the man is being watched by doctors and was in fine health at the time. Per the BBC, police decided to keep the public informed of the man’s bowel movements in an effort to quash any illusions that drug dealing is “glamorous.”

A Little Caesars restaurant near downtown Indianapolis is back open, after health inspectors shut it down Tuesday after receiving a couple’s complaint of rat or mice droppings baked into their pizza, according to WXIN.Johnathan McNeil said he and his girlfriend bought a pizza at the establishment near the intersection of 22nd St. and Meridian St., but on the way home she noticed something was amiss.“She looked at the pizza and realized there was, like, doo-doo looking stuff on the pizza,” said McNeil.McNeil said he returned to the restaurant to demand an explanation.“All of them were looking at my pizza dumbfounded as if they didn’t know what’s going on,” said McNeil. “I said ‘That’s mouse doo-doo on the bottom of my pizza.’”McNeil said he called police who arrived on the scene and suggested he contact the Marion County Health Department.

Not sure why the police were called in.

An inspector initiated an emergency inspection, which resulted in the business license being suspended.“We did find that there were rodent droppings and violations that warranted us doing a license suspension,” said Janelle Kaufman with the Marion County Health Department.Upon a follow-up inspection the next morning, Kaufman said the problems had been corrected.“They cooperated with us, they worked with us … they cleaned everything they needed to do,” said Kaufman.Inspection reports show the restaurant has been doing battle with mice since at least last August. The store was cited four times since then, before being given the all-clear on October 3, 2017. However, the store was never closed.Health officials said with only seventeen inspectors to cover about 4600 county restaurants, they rely on diners to be their eyes and ears.“When they call and let us know what they see, it’s so helpful to us,” said Kaufman, “any restaurant can benefit from another inspection.”McNeil hopes other diners will learn from his experience.“I just want people to check their food and be very cautious about what they’re eating,” said McNeil.Managers at the store declined to comment. WXIN reached out for comment from the restaurant’s corporate franchise owner, but did not immediately heard back.Restaurant inspection reports are not posted until 10 days after they are conducted, however a restaurant’s cumulative inspection history can be found online.

Sarah Montgomery of Complex writes that everybody poops. But not everyone uses the same tools to carry out that biological necessity. One Reddit user recently discovered that a tool he’s been using his whole life was not, in fact, a staple in bathrooms around the world.

Cue the “poop knife,” a mechanism used by @LearnedButt’s family to break up their apparently gargantuan shits. “My family poops big,” he wrote in a post. “If anyone has laid a mega-poop, you know that sometimes it won’t flush. It lays across the hole in the bottom of the bowl and the vortex of draining water merely gives it a spin as it mocks you.” What imagery.

The user went on to explain via Reddit how his family has used an old kitchen knife for decades to slice up their fecal matter. The knife hung on a nail in their laundry room, constantly waiting for its next big task. “It was normal to walk through the hallway and have someone call out ‘hey, can you get me the poop knife?’” he explains. “I thought it was standard kit. You have your plunger, your toilet brush, and your poop knife.”

A terrified, befuddled Yadav sprinted to the village head, another villager, Sukhbir Singh, said.

The news spread like wildfire and a few minutes later, a large number of the villagers had circled the frigid “rock”, which later turned out to be human excret – a human poop.

While the elders wracked their brains to make a good guess, the children brimming with curiosity declared it was a gift by the aliens.

“It is a white, holy stone gifted by the aliens,” a child exclaimed.

Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Pataudi, Vivek Kalia told PTI a few people approached the district administration, and a team comprising officials from the Meteorological department and the National Disaster Management Authority was formed under Kalia.

The team found the “celestial gift” the whole village was talking about the entire day was “blue ice”, a term used for frozen toilet waste leaking from aircraft, Kalia said.

Even the current one, Ted, the Cavalier master of indifference, loves nothing more than going outside and chowing down on some cat or possum poop.

Saryn Chorney of People Pets writes, it’s a topic that has long perplexed animal researchers and veterinarians. And if you Google the topic, you’re likely to get more than a dozen different explanations ranging from canine anxiety to illness to simply boredom.

(Boredom explains many of life’s ills, human or dog or cat.)

However, a new study led by veterinarian Benjamin Hart, director of the Center for Animal Behavior at the University of California at Davis, has managed to link the off-putting behavior to “greedy eating” (dogs that quickly ravish their food bowls, according to owners) as well as an instinct connected to canines’ ancestral wolf pack days.

Hart and his team surveyed over 3,000 dog owners. Of these subjects, 16 percent ate other dogs’ feces “frequently” (their owners had witnessed a crappy chow down session at least six times), and of those pups, 80 percent preferred fresh feces less than two days old. Who doesn’t?

Interestingly, the research suggested that the tendency towards coprophagia (the scientific term for poop-eating) was evident no matter a dog’s age, breed, diet, house-training status or compulsive behavior tendency. This finding has unleashed a new theory: Modern day dogs have inherited both their aversion to pooping where they live as well as their likelihood to eat fresh poop from their ancient wolf ancestors.

Back in those wild days, wolves may’ve eaten the fresh feces of sick, lame or old members who accidentally let a load loose as a way to clean up inside and around their den. Since it takes about two days for parasites and other pathogens to develop, eating fresh poop is not usually dangerous, and in fact, eating poop that was festering in their living quarters was actually a helpful way to avoid intestinal parasites such as larvae and worms.

That said, some great minds in the canine scientific community think there may be a bit more to it. For instance, Professor James Serpell of the University of Pennsylvania and editor of the recent book The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behavior and Interactions with People, told the Washington Post he finds the wolf theory “plausible,” but he’s also intrigued by the “greedy eaters” survey findings. He referenced a study of free-roaming wild dogs in developing countries that scavenge for food and, as a result, fill up on a sizable amount of human feces. This seems to indicate that poop could be viewed, errr digested, as a second-hand food source.

Today, dogs (and cats) “are fed diets that are relatively rich in fats and protein, not all of which may be completely digested, making their feces potentially attractive as a second hand food source,” Serpell told the Washington Post.

So, there you have it. Poop-eating is probably a normal, evolutionary dog trait.

I buy the greedy eaters theory: Ted the wonder dog was the runt of the litter, raised outside, and 2 years later, still eats by retrieving a piece of kibble and taking it to the couch or bed to chow down.

Christine Parker and John Shoemaker, of St. Louis, detailed their foul experience in November aboard the Carnival Triumph in an interview with the Miami Herald, claiming unsanitary conditions on the 14-deck, 893-foot mega-ship turned what should have been a celebration into a potential health scare.

“We didn’t have a good honeymoon,” Parker told the newspaper. “People expect you to come back so excited and we have been fighting with the Carnival staff and smelling poop in our room. We were exhausted and angry.”

To make matters even worse, Parker claimed crew members aboard the ship acted as if black sewage reeking of fecal matter was no big deal.

For her troubles, Parker said Carnival offered her a $300 credit to be used on the ship and 15 percent off her next cruise with the company — which she doesn’t intend to book anytime soon.

The ship, which arrived back in south Florida on Nov. 11, was later given a failing grade by inspectors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program.

Two other Carnival Cruise Line ships — the Breeze and the Vista, the company’s newest vessel — failed similar inspections in December, bringing the company’s tally to three failed inspections within two months, according to the Herald.

A Miami-based maritime attorney told the newspaper that failed inspections on cruise ships typically occur roughly two or three times per year, making the rash of poor grades a rarity.

Fruit flies were found by the buffet and in a Parmesan cheese container. Crew failed to appropriately document illnesses on board.

On the Carnival Breeze, another of the Doral-based line’s newest vessels, machinery was found to be corroded or not functioning properly. About 25 garbage bins overflowing with waste were found by inspectors near an area where food was handled.

These violations and dozens of others landed both ships failing grades from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vessel Sanitation Program, which routinely inspects cruise ships in an effort to control the spread of gastrointestinal illnesses. Ships must score 86 points or higher, out of 100, to pass.

But December’s reports follow another Carnival failure reported in November aboard the Carnival Triumph, bringing Carnival’s tally to three failed inspections in the past two months.

The Christchurch City Council has taken steps to reduce closures across its three indoor facilities. This has led to a 20 per cent drop in closures this year compared to 2016 when the pools were closed 224 times.

Most incidents happened in the leisure pool, which was closed 52 times, followed by the teach pool with 20 closures.

With those kind of numbers, should there be a sad poop emoji to go with the smiling pile of poop emoji?

Barbara Ortutay of USA Today reports that the Unicode Consortium is tasked with setting the global standard for the icons. It’s a heady responsibility and it can take years from inspiration — Hey, why isn’t there a dumpling? — to a new symbol being added to our phones.

That’s because deciding whether a googly-eyed turd should express a wider range of emotions is not the frivolous undertaking it might appear to be. Picking the newest additions to our roster of cartoonish glyphs, from deciding on their appearance to negotiating rules that allow vampires but bar Robert Pattinson’s or Dracula’s likeness, actually has consequences for modern communication.

Not since the printing press has something changed written language as much as emojis have, says Lauren Collister, a scholarly communications librarian at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Emoji is one way language is growing,” she says. “When it stops growing and adapting, that’s when a language dies.”

So full congrats to the New York Daily Post, whose front-page this morning slammed the immigration comments of so-called U.S. President Donald Trump with an appropriate emoji of its own.

According to the Washington Post, which first reported the story, President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they discussed protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to several people briefed on the meeting.

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.

Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries such as Norway, whose prime minister he met with Wednesday. The president, according to a White House official, also suggested he would be open to more immigrants from Asian countries because he felt they help the United States economically.

In addition, the president singled out Haiti, telling lawmakers that immigrants from that country must be left out of any deal, these people said.

“Why do we need more Haitians?” Trump said, according to people familiar with the meeting. “Take them out.”

George Washington said in 1783, “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights & privileges” (except for colored people which was sorta dumb).

Maybe Jimmy Buffett got it.

Buffet’s 1978 album, Son of a Son of a Sailor, was one of the first 8-tracks I bought while on vacation in Florida when I was 15-years-old, and it included the track Manana, which weirdly applies to Trump.